eupator
destroyer of delusions
- Messages
- 507
- Reaction score
- 281
- Points
- 63
- Ethnic group
- Rhōmaiōs (Rumelia + Anatolia)
I am going to post this bit also as an epilogue, I am getting tired of this argumentation and I am pretty sure everyone is.
So the way I see things are, we have a publication by Harvard where a certain methodology (open sourced) is used to analyze and dissect these thousand years human remains, their DNA extracted with varying levels of success and sequenced. The authors believe in the application of their hypothesis, because their process has included an imputation part where missing data are produced, and thus the end result is good enough, according to them, to achieve a level of reliability.
So far so good, obviously there's going to be criticisms about it (and they already are) when it comes to conclusions that involve other fields, like archaeology, linguistics, etc.
Now, on the other hand, we have the "other crowd" (for lack of a better term) that dispute these conclusions, not from an archeological standpoint mind you, but because their own toolset of choice (closed sourced, since it's a commercial product/service) paints a different picture.
Where's the problem with that? Well, this argument of theirs requires a leap of faith from the rest of us and trust on the intentions and infallibility of the authors of the methodological tool, and as such this would never even be recognized as a valid alternative in an actual academic research environment, since there has to be some sort of validation process, from third parties, of the toolset.
It's just pure madness and goes against every little step of the academic process, which is transparency and the ability to reproduce the results of the methodology.
That's all I have left to say on the matter.
So the way I see things are, we have a publication by Harvard where a certain methodology (open sourced) is used to analyze and dissect these thousand years human remains, their DNA extracted with varying levels of success and sequenced. The authors believe in the application of their hypothesis, because their process has included an imputation part where missing data are produced, and thus the end result is good enough, according to them, to achieve a level of reliability.
So far so good, obviously there's going to be criticisms about it (and they already are) when it comes to conclusions that involve other fields, like archaeology, linguistics, etc.
Now, on the other hand, we have the "other crowd" (for lack of a better term) that dispute these conclusions, not from an archeological standpoint mind you, but because their own toolset of choice (closed sourced, since it's a commercial product/service) paints a different picture.
Where's the problem with that? Well, this argument of theirs requires a leap of faith from the rest of us and trust on the intentions and infallibility of the authors of the methodological tool, and as such this would never even be recognized as a valid alternative in an actual academic research environment, since there has to be some sort of validation process, from third parties, of the toolset.
It's just pure madness and goes against every little step of the academic process, which is transparency and the ability to reproduce the results of the methodology.
That's all I have left to say on the matter.
.
